Yes, it’s been a while! Blame college. I have one month left before I’m thrust into the terrifying world of non-Academia (unless I get a scholarship for an MA, in which case it’s Ivory Tower all the way for me).
I’ve got a new Interroblog post on genre boundaries, YA and manga. Go read it here.
Phoebe recently did a post on editing, which got me thinking about how people approach their unpublished manuscripts. (And when I say ‘people’, I mean ‘me’.) There’s a lot of advice out there that covers more than just the technical side of writing. Blog posts dealing with how to approach genre boundaries and publishing categories and first-draft woes are a dime a dozen, and a lot of them boil down to a simple rule: just write what you want. Don’t worry about what genre you want to be published in, or what an editor is going to think of your unconventional story structure, or that nagging voice at the back of your head that keeps saying you’d be better off if you went with first-person instead of third. Just write, and get a first draft done at all costs.
I think some of the people who give out advice like that are suffering from a severe case of Writer Romanticism. Here’s why.
I think a lot of people want to believe that they’ll never have to make sacrifices to get publishes publication. Sure, plenty of other authors might need to do it on occasion, but you’ll be different; your sheer creative genius will ensure that no editor dares tamper with your vision. Not only do you not care about what genre your book is supposed to be, you’re not even sure what the different genres are. Creativity! Artistic integrity! Freedom!
And you know what? That’s probably a good attitude to have once you’re holding a contract in your hands. There are certain changes I’d absolutely refuse to make to my current WIP (hint: it’s a topic that’s been stirring up controversy in recent weeks), even if it meant foregoing publication. Instead, I’d like to suggest a slightly counter-intuitive option: that you take the constraints of the publishing industry into account while you’re still writing.
Are you planning on writing YA? Then try to make your manuscript suitable for that market from the beginning. And when I say ‘suitable’, I don’t mean in terms of its content. There are certain formal rules for YA that you probably don’t want to break without giving it a lot of consideration first. Viewpoint is a big one; in adult fantasy, for example, it’s usually expected that you have anywhere from four to (in the more extreme cases) eight or nine viewpoint characters, some of whom might only get a chapter or two to themselves. YA fantasy? Yeah, not so much. On the other hand, present tense narration is much more common in YA than it is in a lot of other publishing categories, which means you’re unlikely to face many objections down the line if you feel like using it. (Although I could personally do with seeing a lot less of it, which is clearly the most important thing here.)
I really don’t think this kind of consideration compromises your work’s merit. I mean, you want to get published, right? Then focus on getting published. Is your novel really going to be that much better just because you didn’t take its genre into account at the outset?
There’s a related idea that goes something along the lines of ‘Write first, revise later’ – in other words, get your first draft down even if it’s a mangled wreck and then fix it when you’re done. I’m starting to think this is among the worst pieces of advice out there, for the simple reason that there are times when ‘getting it finished’ is a terrible idea. Confession time: I’ve only finished a single first draft from start to finish. I got to the last sentence, finished it, and then instantly realized that I should have completely altered the story’s structure, focus and plot…starting from about the 5k mark. I first realised this around this at around 30k, but decided to keep going because I wanted to ‘just get it done’.
Yeah.
If you know that you’re going to radically alter the direction your story is going, there is no point continuing down the wrong path. If things aren’t working at 30k, stop and go back to the last point where they were working. I did this with Castor, my WIP. I was getting close to 50k when I realised that having things develop into a fairly typical, action-heavy chase plot was a horrible idea. That kind of story has never appealed to me, and my writing quickly went down the drain when I forced myself to try it. So I stopped, deleted something like 40k words, and started again with a revised plot. I’m now writing what is essentially a second draft, and it’s far superior to what I was doing before.
Those 40k words I deleted were not shining examples of pure creative energy. No amount of reworking would have ever turned them into shining examples of pure creative energy. They were just bad, or at least mediocre, so what use would it have been to keep them?
I would even say that it’s worth stopping to consider whether your novel is likely to have mainstream appeal. If you don’t care about that, no problem, but I’m not going to look down my nose at someone if they tell me that they tweaked their manuscript with a wider audience in mind. (I will look down my nose at anybody who says they’re writing a certain kind of story just to make money, though. Screw that.) Remember, you’re trying to get published, so write with that in mind.
I may have said a few times before that I’m studying for an Arts degree in NUI Maynooth, which is the best college ever. (If you live in Ireland.) I’m double-majoring in English and History, which is a popular combination for fairly obvious reasons.
What I probably haven’t mentioned is that, in secondary school, I was advised on a few different occassions to not study English if I wanted to become a writer. Several people warned me that that my writing would become too stiff and formalised, or that I’d go to college for three years and come out incapable of writing anything other than dense literary criticism. This might seem like strange advice give how many published authors have a BA in English, but now that I’m only a month or two away from finishing my degree (insert terrified screaming here), I can see where they were coming from.
Because if I’m honest, studying English probably hasn’t helped my writing. Being in college has, however – and enormously so.
Let me explain what ‘studying English’ at third level actually entails, for those of you who have never done it. There’s thing called ‘literary theory’, right? It’s very difficult, and complicated, and at least 80% of the time seems to have absolutely nothing to do with literature. It’s the reason why I get more of my library books from the Sociology or Anthropology or, in one memorable case, from the Economics sections of the library than I do from the Literature section. It’s interdisciplinarity taken to the extreme. Encountering it for the first time is akin to getting hit in the face with a brick.
Jacques Derrida using his famous Deconstruction Eyebeams.
Oh, except it doesn’t matter, because Theory Is Dead. Only it kind of does matter, because maybe Theory Isn’t Dead after all? Whatever, go read some Julia Kristeva. Everyone loves psychoanalysis.
So if theory isn’t the beginning and ending of an English degree, what else do you actually do? Well, my last essay was about Flann O’Brien’s At Swim-Two-Birds, and how he uses the legendary figure of Fionn mac Cumhaill to critique the society of the Irish Free State. I tend not to re-read my essays once I’ve handed them in for fear of discovering that I’ve accidentally mispelled my name on the cover sheet, but I can assure you that skimming over it now would be very, very unlikely to inspire any good story ideas. For me, writing fiction and writing that kind of thing are two completely separate endeavours.
But I wouldn’t say that studying English has been a waste of time in terms of my writing goals, because being in college – being in a very intellectual atmosphere, surrounded by books and an almost unlimited amount of knowledge – has been incredibly beneficial for me. I’ve heard people say that they kept their day jobs even when they could afford to write full time it let them stay connected to the world. I happen to think those people are crazy (or just not nearly as anti-social as I am), but I could see myself saying the same thing about college. When you’re studying, you’re constantly coming into contact with new ideas, at least some of which will be useful to you. Castor, my WIP, wouldn’t be half the story it is now if I hadn’t incorporated subtle elements from my history lectures into it.
So, would I recommend that an aspiring writer study English? Only if you think you’re going to love doing it. (And I mean really love doing it, because it can be a slog sometimes.) If not, study something else. Study history, or philosophy, or anthropology or ancient history or, I don’t know, Chinese. Or theoretical physics, although I’d personally gravitate towards humanities subjects if you’re hoping to aid your writing abilities. Just don’t let those critical faculties of yours atrophy, because you’ll need them if you ever want to be a good writer.
I’ve never been a big fan of American comic books. I find it extremely difficult to take superhero comics seriously, particularly when the writers try to inject pathos into their stories of hyper-muscled spandex fanatics by having them spout outrageously corny dialog (Superman writers are the absolute worst for this, unsurprisingly). Even people who write less mainstream fare seem to find it difficult to break out of the Marvel/DC mould – by now it is no longer a big enough twist to have your superheroes not dress like idiots.
But I like manga, hereon out referred to as ‘Japanese comics’ just to annoy the purists. Part of the attraction is that there’s a much greater diversity of genre than what you tend to get in American comics; look hard enough and you can find almost any kind of story you could want, from typical shonen action-fests to sports comics to a seemingly endless number of romance subgenres.
Sometimes people even make manga about making manga, which brings me to the main topic of this post.
Art supplies are my energy!!
Bakuman starts off with a chance encounter between two teenagers. One can write, one can draw, and together they make a formidable duo. The story follows their (not always successful) attempts at getting their own comic serialised in Shonen Jump, the most mainstream of the mainstream weekly magazines – and also the one that generates more mega-hit series than anybody else. (It’s also where Bakuman was published in Japan.)
If you’re an aspiring author, and I’m guessing lots of people reading this are, ask yourself this: when did you decide that you wanted to be published? Note the word ‘published’, there. I’m asking when you first decided that you wanted to throw your lot in with the publishing industry as a career, or at least as a way of getting a readership. For me, it happened when I was about fifteen, and I haven’t looked back since. Getting published has been my primary goal in life from that point onward. Except it’s more than that; just getting published isn’t enough (at least in the long-term). I want to make a living from writing. Hell, I’d like to get rich from writing, someday.
Actually, you know what? I want to be a famous author. There, I said it.
I think that’s why Bakuman resonates with me so strongly. The characters have an enormous amount of creative talent, obviously, and they’re passionate about what they do, but their goals are unwaveringly commercial. They decide what to draw based on what they think will sell, not based on what their creative soul (or whatever) urges them to draw. Almost from the beginning, they start working with an editor at Shonen Jump’s publishing company who sees their potential and tries to guide them down the correct path. This is very much a story of two people trying to make it in a particular publishing industry, rather than the story of two creative geniuses growing through their art. The American YA equivalent to what they do would be somebody writing a book that is precisely calculated to be the Next Big Thing in paranormal romance. (And this is the point where all of the writers in the audience pretend that they’ve never considered doing that, the very idea, artistic integrity etc. etc.)
I really wonder why more people aren’t writing stories like this for teenagers. Most authors take up writing in their early teens, and it’s not uncommon for people to start entertaining thoughts of publication while they’re still in high school. Hell, it’s not unheard of for somebody to actually be published while in high school – it’s not as if there’s an age requirement for becoming a published author. Where are the stories of a teenage prodigy navigating their way through the publishing industry, making the artistic concessions required to get a book on the shelves – or, alternatively, doing battle with their editor and refusing to make those concessions? Why aren’t there more writer-protagonists in YA, struggling to finish a draft in between high school drama and throwing themselves into the often-insane world of online writing communities? Imagine how strange it would seem to a ‘normal’ audience to know just how obsessive aspiring authors can be about keeping up with trends and editor requests and the minute details of agency response times. (Yes, people actually do this. Yes, it’s as crazy as it sounds.)
This is totally what writing feels like. Totally.
Bakuman isn’t shy about the downsides of trying to make it big, either, even if it does present the Japanese comic industry in an undeniably exaggerated and positive light. Rivalry and bitter resentment are constant companions for those who are overshadowed by their more talented (or lucky) peers, and every character we follow is acutely aware of the fact that only a handful of people can ever rise to the top. But if you make it…well, there’s no room for ‘if’. You have to make it, right? It’s in your blood, after all, it’s what you do, and no amount of rejection or failure is going to change that.
Before I recommend Bakuman too much, I should point out that it has its flaws. The plot is held together by a truly ridiculous relationship between the main character and his personality-deprived girlfriend, and their total lack of chemistry would put even the most banal YA Paranormal Romance to shame. There’s also an unsavory vein of misogyny running through the whole thing. Early on, one of the main characters starts talking at length about how ‘smart girls should hide their intelligence so that guys will think they’re cute’ (yes, really). The main character’s mother lets him devote his time to making comics after his father tells her that ‘men have dreams women can never understand’ (uuuurgh). The only female character in the entire story with any real independence eventually turns into a glorified domestic servant for a pair of teenage boys – but she’s happy to do it, because it means she gets to help them fulfill their goals! So yeah, that part is pretty bad, although it’s not too surprising when you consider that this was written by the same person who did Death Note. (That’s the ‘Yes, you used to be an FBI agent, but now you’re just my fiancé so shut up’ series, for those who might have forgotten.)
If you can look past all that, Bakuman is a compelling and surprisingly down-to-earth glimpse into what it takes to break into a creative field. If you’ve ever thought of writing a YA novel about somebody trying to get published, give this a read. I think it shows pretty clearly that you can make that kind of story informative for non-writers and entertaining at the same time.
